According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project , 19 percent of Internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys conducted in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11 percent of internet users said they used Twitter or another micro-blogging service.

Yesterday, on the IAC earnings conference call, CEO Barry Diller said that he'd be open to selling Ask.com. The media took off with the comments as if they were new and a deal was imminent. It's not. A source familiar with the matter said there are currently no talks about an Ask.com acquisition or spinoff. Diller's comments were made in response to constant questions that IAC receives regarding their willingness to sell Ask.com. Their response has always been the same .

Google AdWords has added support for Google Translator Toolkit . This means you can now translate your keywords and have ads appear to global audiences in their language. However, Search Engine Watch columnist Andy Atkins-Krüger warned about the pitfalls of keyword translation in an August post entitled Translating Keywords Should Never EVER Happen . Atkins-Kruger made the good point that while serving up ads to audiences in their language is important,

If you keep up with mobile tech news, you know that a bunch of Android devices are coming out soon. They'll soon be running Android 2.0 and with that will come a new feature: Google Maps Navigation . Google Maps Navigation brings GPS navigation to Android. It will provide turn-by-turn directions, 3D views and automatic rerouting. It will also have, of course, powerful search features.

Google is celebrating the third birthday of Custom Search with many updates. Here they are: Custom Search Themes - Now you can customize the look of Custom Search on your site with themes, which can be tweaked for color, font, background and feature adjustments. Custom Search Skin on Wikipedia - On the flip side, you can contextualize your Wikipedia experience with a Custom Search skin . When enabled,

GazoPa, a similar image search engine developed by Hitachi America, is now open for public beta testing. You don't need a login. Simply go to GazoPa.com and check it out. What you do is either upload an image, paste the URL to an image, type in a keyword - or even draw an image directly on the site. GazoPa will then try to find images similar to what you've provided. Drawing an image was tempting, so I digitally sketched up a quick pumpkin,

Just hours after GazoPa announced its similar image public beta test to the public , Google announced that it was releasing its similar image search out of Labs . Now, anyone could have experimented with the similar image search while it was in Labs, but you can only run one Labs experiment at a time. And a new experiment, Social Search, was added to Labs yesterday. We're used to seeing Google release updates, products, major news, etc. in reaction to Microsoft or Yahoo!

If you've passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test and need to prove it to your clients or your company, Google is helping validate your awesome web analytics prowess. Now, you can create a link to your web-published test record . Simply go to the Google Testing Center and sign in with the same email you used when taking the test. Once signed in click the "Manage Your Test" Records link. Then, click "Add Link." On the next screen,

When signing up for Google Voice, you previously had to get a new phone number in order to get an account. Now, Google is allowing people to sign up with their current mobile phone numbers. You can still get a new phone number if you choose. If you sign up with your current number, you'll get: Online,

Ask.com and Citysearch parent company IAC released its third quarter earnings for 2009 . Overall revenues came in at $336.6 million down 9% from the same quarter last year. However, profit for the quarter came in at $21.7 million, up from the $14.8 million loss suffered last year. The profits are largely due to the sales of OpenTable and Match Europe. IAC's Media and Advertising Division, which contains Ask, Dictionary.com and Citysearch )among others(, brought in $172.

Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit, Google VP Marissa Mayer announced a new experiment in Labs: Social Search . Now, that experiment has officially been launched . If you'd like to participate, simply go to the Google Labs page )http://www.google.com/experimental/( . Look for the Social Search experiment and click "Join This Experiment." You can only participate in one experiment at a time, so you'll have to leave any other Google Labs experiments you are a part of. Then,

If you like to be terrified, then the days and weeks leading up to Halloween are for you. One of Halloween's favorite traditions is the Haunted House and if you need help finding ones in your area, MapQuest has come to the rescue. They've teamed up with HauntWorld to provide a Haunted House search . Simply go to MapQuest.com and either type in a city or zoom in to a city. Click the ghost icon on the On Map Search Tool.

Click Forensics has released its click fraud report for the third quarter of 2009 . Botnet activity caused the rate to rise and accounted for more click fraud activity. The click fraud rate rose to 14.1% in the third quarter, up from 12.7% in the second quarter, but down from 16% in the third quarter of 2008. Botnets accounted for 42.6% of click fraud in Q3 2009, more than double the 27.5% rate in Q3 2008.

Have you ever noticed "something different" about someone but you couldn't quite put your finger on it? Usually, it turns out that the person got a slight haircut or was wearing a new shade of eyeshadow or something. It was subtle, and your brain registered the change, but it wasn't obvious. Well, the same kind of change has come to Google Maps. They've updated fonts, street widths, colors, etc. The changes aren't very obvious, but they're there.

Google AdWords is testing a new interface for My Client Center. If you want to check it out, just click the link in the current My Client Center Dashboard. According to the Inside AdWords blog , the changes will include the following: In-line editing of account descriptions : In-line editing cuts the time it takes for you to make changes to your account names. Instead of waiting for a new page to load, just click an account description to edit it right on the Dashboard.

While Twitter allows people to delete Tweets, often times those zombie Tweets were still indexed in Twitter's search. Apparently, that's no longer a problem. MG Siegler over at TechCrunch has been doing some testing and finding that deleted Tweets aren't showing up in Twitter search . They're not even showing up in the search API, according to Siegler. I did a small test myself and sure enough, my deleted Tweet was immediately removed from Twitter's search results. So,

Once AOL is spinned off from Time Warner , it will require a Board of Directors. Today, nine members were named . They are: Richard L. Dalzell made a name for himself at Amazon, where he started held a variety of executive-level roles from 1997 until 2007. Prior to Amazon, Dalzell was VP of Information Systems at Walmart. Karen E. Dykstra is a partner at Plainfield Asset Management LLC, and has been COO and CFO of Plainfield Direct Inc. since 2006.

He came, he kinda sorta conquered and now he's left. Investor Carl Icahn, who stirred up investors during the Microsoft acquisition attempt, quit Yahoo!'s Board of Directors on Friday . After Yahoo! failed to accept Microsoft's offer to fully acquire the Sunnyvale-based Internet company, Carl Icahn embarked on his own attempt to overthrow Yahoo!'s Board of Directors . Icahn ultimately settled with Yahoo! just before the 2008 shareholders meeting.

As announced a couple of months ago, Geocities will cease to exist today. Interestingly Yahoo does not have an upgrade or new alternative for this now homeless online population. GeoCities was the biggest online community prior to the dotcom bubble burst. Yahoo purchased them for $3.57 billion at the height of the internet bubble, but the community was the precusor of MySpace and Facebook but no major additions and updates were ever developed for the portal.

An Iranian search engine dedicated to Islamic teachings and records online for Qur'anic websites was launched this week, Press TV announced. The results only come from 360 websites at the moment, Press TV reported, but other sites were planned to be added.